Harvard Book Store: Competitive Advantage Speakers: Charles Handy

Charles Handy is widely recognized as one of Britain's top-tier management writers. He is the author of six highly acclaimed business books, including his most recent book, The Hungry Spirit. Educated at Oxford and MIT, he has been an executive with Shell International Oil Company and a professor at the London School of Business, where he was one of the early faculty.

Charles Handy spoke at our Competitive Advantage Breakfast on January 28, 1998.
Mr. Handy began by addressing the question, "Why did I write The Hungry Spirit?" He spoke of the book as his process of learning -- of "moving from 'how' to 'why.'" He talked of realizing that he was caught between economics and success on one side and "the white stone" on the other side.
The white stone, he said, comes from a Biblical verse in the Book of Revelations, which says that each person is given a white stone with their true name on it, and only they know what that name is. He felt that it wasn't enough to just be successful, that "if I prevailed, if I was successful in the right way, I would find my true self." His true self, he said, is different from the labels he has gathered over the years -- economist, professor, and so on.
His wife once asked him if he was proud of what he did for a living, and he answered, "It's all right." She helped him realize that he needed to feel better than "all right" about his life. When his father, a country minister in Ireland, died, Handy realized at the funeral how much of a difference his father had made to so many people, even though he led a simple, quiet life. This new awareness of the true meaning of success led him to resign his professorship in favor of becoming a writer.
Mr. Handy used two examples from the economies of other countries to illustrate the difference between simply succeeding and making a difference:
The Estonian Challenge arises because in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, the economy is knowledge-based, and many people living there are very walthy. Outside Tallinn, though, the economy is depressed, and the majority of Estonians are very poor. The challenge, then, is to achieve an economic balance rather than supporting a system where the rich minority is in control of the poor majority.
The Chindogu Economy is a concept that originated in Japan. "Chindogu" means "interesting but useless," and many products created in Japan today fit that description. When we exceed our need for material goods, our economy becomes based on chindogu products. Handy quoted Adam Smith as saying, "Economic growth is obviously desirable ... but carried to extremes, will come an economy of useless things." Clearly, we should steer away from becoming such an economy.

Charles Handy closed his talk by speaking about Borgo San Sepulcro, a small town in Tuscany that holds great significance for him because of its fresco of the Resurrection of Christ in the town hall. The painting, Handy said, serves as a reminder that even if one's life has been a failure, one always has the chance to make a new start and reinvent one's self.
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